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The Cognitive Illusion Controversy: A Methodological Debate in Disguise That Matters to Economists

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Experimental Business Research

Abstract

In the early 1970s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky launched a research program that showed that heuristic short-cuts can result in probability judgments that deviate from statistical principles. Because these cognitive illusions have important implications for economic behavior, the heuristics-and-biases program has attracted the attention of economists as well as numerous social scientists. Even as the heuristics-and-biases program gained acceptance outside psychology, it drew criticism within the field. In this chapter, we mine the debate among psychologists about the reality of cognitive illusions for methodological lessons of relevance to experimental economists. Our concern here is neither the controversy about cognitive illusions nor its implications for rationality. Instead, it is what we see as the important methodological insights that have emerged from the controversy, which can inform the choices that all behavioral experimenters wittingly or unwittingly make when they sample and represent stimuli for use in their experiments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Basel, Basel

    Ralph Hertwig

  2. Charles University and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague

    Andreas Ortmann

Authors
  1. Ralph Hertwig
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  2. Andreas Ortmann
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Rami Zwick

  2. Department of Management and Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721

    Amnon Rapoport

  3. Department of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Amnon Rapoport

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Hertwig, R., Ortmann, A. (2005). The Cognitive Illusion Controversy: A Methodological Debate in Disguise That Matters to Economists. In: Zwick, R., Rapoport, A. (eds) Experimental Business Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-24244-9_5

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